Tag: Jesus

Categories
healing seeing

Seeing

Daffodils and snowdrops out at the same time. Photographed Thursday 15th February 2024 on my river walk at St Asaph

I read this great Substack post by Fiona Koefoed-Jespersen the other day about “The real miracle is seeing” which looks at the story from Acts where John and Peter heal the lame man by the Beautiful Gate [Acts 3:1-10] in which she says that the real miracle is that all three of them, John, Peter and the lame man, all actually see each other for the first time.

She says

What if the biggest miracle of this story is not the healing of a man born lame, but that three people separated by physical ability and difference, by religious interpretation of that difference, and by so many other economic and social realities, actually pause long enough to look each other in the eyes.

And

What if walking the Way of Jesus becomes an inability to ignore, to pass hasty judgement, to believe the propaganda or the toxic theology?

What if three plus years of being discipled by a poor Palestinian Jewish rabbi had led them to this greatest miracle: recognising their common humanity with the person in front of them?

But I also think there was something in the lame man that made him actually see John and Peter properly too. This lame man had been there for years. I often wonder if Jesus had walked past him. In fact I often wonder how there were still people who needed healing in all of Jerusalem and Galilee after three years of Jesus’ ministry on earth.

So after pondering this I think that it takes both sides to be doing the “seeing”. If the lame man had not really looked up at John and Peter he would not have asked them to really heal them. Something went on on both sides of this interaction for the true healing to take place.

I was thinking of this with people I know. Yes I can fully see them and build relationship from my side but if they don’t want to, or can’t, fully see this with me then we cannot build together. It takes two.

Actually this happened to me over this weekend with a friend who I felt hadn’t fully seen what I was feeling but then later in the conversation I said something to which her response was “oh I get what you’re saying now”. Once I felt truly seen I felt barriers go down that I wasn’t even sure I had put up.

So yes we do need to get beyond toxic theologies and prejudices and yes we need to fully see each others humanity. But things will only come together in peace if both sides are willing to do that. And as in all relationships it needs to be a regular daily thing. Not just a one off.

Categories
Love truth

Service

Snowdrops hidden in the woods. Photographed by myself 26th Jan 2024. Spring is coming

What does Service mean? To you? To me?

In Josh Luke Smith’s latest email he says that we all want Meaning. Relationships. Service. I do agree but I think for years I got what service meant wrong. And I think I was encouraged to keep believing in the wrong either because other people had got it wrong or because it supported others.

Before meeting with God thirty+ years ago I pleased myself and I don’t think I really served others. Though I probably did. I worked in hospitality, had friends round for parties, meals, etc. But I thought I was just doing things that everyone did and that was it.

So when I met with God the church talked a lot about service and about serving God. Serving God seemed to mean doing something in church as a volunteer which for me was children or youth stuff. So I was always busy busy in church doing stuff and I would get fed up with it all and that, amongst other things, was what stopped me wanting to attend church. [Yes there are other reasons but I think this whole thing of feeling that to belong I had to be volunteering got me down]

But it wasn’t just church. Lots of places talk about serving which again seems to be doing things for nothing to further that organisation. But now I’m not so sure. And I would say as I read these daily emails I’m not the only one.

I’m not in regular paid work at the moment and will continue like that because I’m 62. That doesn’t mean I’m doing nothing though. But I have realised what I do day in day out is service. From walking my dog, looking after my home and feeding my husband, though to chatting with friends and acquaintances, to running the workshops I do, to reading books, to writing stories people may never read, to writing this blog. All these things are acts of service but, I think, because they are things I enjoy and they are not for some church or other organisation I don’t see them as service.

I am now thinking that service is actually me just being the truest me I am and allowing that to flow into the earth in the only way I can let it. So I clean up my act and get healed so my energy is purer, less polluted, less me expecting something from what I do – which I do wonder if a lot of our “serving” is actually serving our own ego! I listen to my heart, to God, to the Universe, to my gut, and only do what I am at peace with. And through that I am so much more than if I was serving for servings sake.

I believe again it comes back to that whole “Love your neighbour as you love yourself” [or as I like to see it “totally love yourself so you can then love others] and then you are serving in ways that others truly need with no agenda for yourself to be bless. But that does take some work to get to that place, some clearing away of traumas and other crap, and being fully free.

know the truth [about yourself and your motives] and the truth will set you free

John 8:32]
Categories
repent Trust God

Natural Order

I’ve ponder the idea that there is a natural order to things on You Don’t Need To Do It and a bit in Trust Is The Key. And I think this is the same for repentance.

Before I met with God I did many things that were not good – out of survival, though my own wounds, through self-centeredness, fear. Probably fear was a lot of the reason. So when I had this big encounter with God – which really needs to be heard rather than read! – I wanted to dive into this whole repentance thing. I got a friend to show me all the verses in the Bible that mentioned sin so I could make sure I repented of everything. I was amazed at how many I needed to repent of one way or another.

Although this was before I found this lovely prayer in the Anglican service

we have left undone those things which we ought to
have done,
and we have done those things which we ought not to
have done

That really does cover most of our lives!

But I thought even then, even in my zeal for meeting with God, there was a natural order of how it worked for me.

Firstly I was accepted by this group of lovely human beings who had got together to evangelise the housing estate I was living on. I was accepted [belonged] to their coffee morning before I went to their Sunday church.

Secondly I had to meet with God and realise how much God loved me unconditionally. And boy was it an amazing encounter. Only then could I start on this journey of repentance. So I had to trust God, believe in and about God and Jesus, and feel I was important to God, special. If I’d been told on that first coffee morning I ever attended that I had to repent and believe I would have high tailed it out of there.

Thirdly though I had to believe and trust that God and Jesus had forgiven me. Actually that was the easiest bit of it. The hardest was going through the journey of forgiving myself because I had done things that had hurt others a lot. But I know I did it because I trusted in Jesus and God to walk with me and leave me high and dry.

Also the whole repentance/forgiveness thing is a totally ongoing thing, which is probably the fourth part. If I believed it was a one off thing and I couldn’t keep coming back to God again and again and again and again and saying sorry and forgiving other people then, I think, I would be a disappointed person.

So daily I ask forgiveness for “those things which I ought to have done, and I have done those things which we ought not to have done” and I am truly sorry. And I forgive those who hurt and upset me whether they did it on purpose or by accident.

But I cannot do those things if God and Jesus are central part of my life, if I don’t trust them moment by moment, don’t rely on them moment by moment.

I do think that repentance and forgiveness should be much a part of our lives that we don’t need to say it but it is in our actions. It is seen when we don’t bitch about people, don’t hold a grudge, don’t worry about things, aren’t fearful, etc. As I explored a while ago, looking at how sinning is really just missing God’s mark, just missing God’s best for us. And anything for holding a grudge and saying bad stuff about people to fit in with others through to worrying and being fearful are the “sins” most of us do. Very few of us murder or steal, but too many of us don’t trust.

I believe we shouldn’t need to tell people but we should be living it day by day – which is what I felt my youth group were trying to tell me and which I shared in Trust Is The Key

Natural order – Trust that God is there for you and loves you unconditionally then repentance and forgiveness will just flow naturally. Or at least I think so.

Categories
house Inner Healing

I Am Not An Onion

Photo from October 2023. These were the last locally cut flowers of the year

The reason for the photo is because it shows the inside wall of my house which is in need of redecorating. We’ve been in this house for eight years now and the hall is one of the rooms I’ve not yet started on.

I have just booked another session of QEC counseling/healing for next week and was free writing around it. As I did that more and more things came up and I started to feel a bit fed up with it. I have been doing this “inner healing” stuff for soooooo long now. Not just QEC but other forms. And yet still there is more.

Someone once compared inner healing to taking off the layers of an onion; that just because you had taken off one layer there were still more to come. I’ve never settled well with that analogy because if one kept on with the healing and taking off the layers soon there would be nothing left.

I know that can be a Christian way of looking at things – to get rid of “me” and just be Jesus. But don’t think there would be verses in the Bible like

“Come to me, all who labour and are heavily laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:29-30

if we were meant to be in the picture at all. I think Jesus is saying that the whole healed me is walk in tandem with the whole Jesus and it won’t be a big deal.

So I am not an onion where eventually there will be nothing left of me.

Whilst free writing this morning what came to me when we do QEC or similar types of healing is we are stripping off the wallpaper that we have used to cover up the walls of who we are. Often whether in the Bible, in dreams, etc “house” or “home” represents ourselves. So what we often do, or let others do, is paper over things in our lives to make us seem more acceptable, to fit in better, to keep us safe. But to be wholly me I have to strip those walls right back to the original plaster and see what cracks are there. Then not paper over the cracks but heal those cracks.

Have you ever stripped wallpaper from an old house where previous occupants haven’t done it? That old wallpaper paste was more like superglue than modern wallpaper paste is. That stuff is rock solid. Sometimes too you come across old newspapers which for some reason were used as lining before putting the wallpaper on. That is then like trying to remove papier mache. It was meant to stay.

Sometimes some of the things we’ve put in to keep us safe after childhood traumas, or even grown up traumas, we’ve put on to last. We don’t want to revisit that. But it makes a bulge in the walls.

So I go back again and again for more healing not because the first lot didn’t work, not because I am an onion, but because I am an grand house that is being renovated room by room.

Categories
Lord's Prayer Trust God Uncategorized

Whose Will?

So two posts in quick succession. This is because I’ve been enjoying my daughter’s company and not had time or headspace to blog.

But I have been praying. And again am stuck on working with The Lord’s Prayer. And especially the line “Your Will be done“.

It made me think of how often we mither [check out the link as it is a north of England expression] at God to do what we think is the right thing. With many situations, whether it is Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, getting things done in my home town, illnesses with people I know, there is much more going on under the surface, hidden histories, that we know little or nothing about, hurts and pains we don’t understand, and so often what we are “telling” God to do is ill-informed. I think this is why Jesus’s advise was telling us to say to God “look I see this situation. I’d love you to be involved in it. Your will be done within that.“

Now I had an interesting thing happen after I was praying for God’s will to be done about a certain person. As me and this person were walking and talking they said something that I could almost see God highlighting for me. It was something very deep with them and shared in a way that I felt led me to ask God if that was a way I was to pray about it. I believe now that God has given me their direction in praying for this person and that God and I are yoked together in this.

I also had another time when I did the “ok it’s your will not mine here” as I was finding certain things with another person difficult. I was also trying to avoid that person. But again God had other plans. There I was walking round my park on my own and they were walking the opposite direction. They greeted me warmly and we walked together. Again I could hear that still small voice saying “this is My will that you walk along side them.” And it was like there was nothing else I had to do but to walk with them.

I can be an organised, planning person. It is a family joke that I like my lists. Often of an evening I write a list of what I want to do the following day as part of my unwind before going to sleep routine. But I also find that I can get into doing this with praying for people; the list with an idea of what each person, situation, etc needs. But this takes away the “your will be done” part of the Lord’s Prayer. I wonder too if these things interfere with the “give me each day my daily bread” part.

So this year I am going to just let God’s will be done, not my will, in how I pray and who I pray for, and just trust and see what happens.

Categories
Cross Lighthouse

To Steer By

Looking towards the end of Ynys Llanddwyn, Newborough, Anglesey. Photographed by myself 26th December 2023

A friend was telling me how when people say to her that it is Jesus is just a crutch she responds with “too right because I can’t do life on my own” [paraphrase]. I found this an interesting response because too often I have heard, and also my response has been, to defend myself, to say that Jesus isn’t a crutch and that we, me and Jesus that is, are walking together equally yoked etc. So her response got lodged in my mind.

Then when we were out on our yearly Boxing day walk, this year accompanied by picnic, to Ynys Llanddwyn with half of the North Wales population, I was struck by the lighthouse and the cross being on the headland of the island. Yes I have seen them before but I don’t think I’ve walked along this path before and got the same view.

How often does that happen that when God wants to highlight something we are lead down a different path way? Often with some phrase or expression or bible verse hovering round our peripheral thought.

I was struck by how no one would mock a sailor who said they were guided by the lighthouse, that they relied on the lighthouse to keep them safe. Yet I wonder how often we are mock for saying we are guided by the cross, that we rely on the cross? Also how often I might keep quiet about being guided by the Cross but openly say how my SATNAV keeps me safe. Or how often we check the weather forecast trusting that but don’t check in with our hearts/the Universe/God to hear where we should be going.

Note to self – be willing to let others know what guides me, but also make sure that guide is the Cross first. Nothing wrong with being guided by lighthouses, SATNAVs or weather forecasts, or all those other things that we use to help us along the way. But make sure that first and foremost it is the Cross the guides and leads us.

And not to be embarrassed by that.

Categories
christmas turkey

What is Christmas all about?

As this is Christmas Eve this gives me time to wish you all a Peaceful Christmas, a time of rest and reflection, and a sense of acceptance, whether you are on your own, with family, having to go through tough times or enjoying life.

I’m off to be part of my favourite service of the whole of Christmas. The Christingle service. I love the words. I love the symbolism. I love that it is a service for children without being cringy and overly child focused. For me it is staying the true meaning of Christmas

Check out what it all means from this post from The Children’s Society who started the whole thing.

But I also wanted to fill you in on a bit of a family joke about me and turkeys. One year we did a road trip to see my husband’s family. I thought I was going to eat turkey till I burst but each household we reached informed us they had done their turkey the day before hand. We even caught up with my son and his then girlfriend in a pub to be told that they didn’t do turkey between Christmas and New Year because people were fed up of. Not me!!

I was quoted as saying “Christmas isn’t Christmas without turkey” which from someone who had never written hard hitting Christmas plays about the true meaning of Christmas would have be amusing but from myself who has spoken on the true meaning of Jesus coming into the world this is hilarious. And of course the phrase has stuck.

Well this is now where God’s amazing sense of humor come in. This year at the Christingle I am part of a group performing Benjamin Zephaniah’s Talking Turkeys.

I am doing the first long verse and saying

Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas
Cos’ turkeys just wanna hav fun
Turkeys are cool, turkeys are wicked
An every turkey has a Mum.
Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas,
Don’t eat it, keep it alive,
It could be yu mate, an not on your plate
Say, Yo! Turkey I’m on your side.
I got lots of friends who are turkeys
An all of dem fear christmas time,
Dey wanna enjoy it, dey say humans destroyed it
An humans are out of dere mind,
Yeah, I got lots of friends who are turkeys
Dey all hav a right to a life,
Not to be caged up an genetically made up
By any farmer an his wife.

At the same time as having roasted my 10lb+ turkey that only myself and my husband are going to eat as both my children aren’t able to make it up for Christmas. A slight touch of irony there.

Whatever your “must have” at Christmas is do enjoy it no matter what amazingly fantastic poets have to say about it 🙂

Categories
positioning Trust God

Happy To Be Second

No matter what this looks like it is definitely my cat saying she comes first.

I was reading 24-7’s Lectio this morning. Josh Luke Smith is looking at John the Baptist especially John 1:6-8

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

Sometimes with known Bible passages we can switch off or tune into a familiar sermon about them but it was reading Josh’s comment ….

I’m a musician and I’ve been on many tours as ‘the support act’. People haven’t primarily bought tickets to see me, but to see the artist or band that’s headlining the show. My role on stage is to warm up the crowd and set up the headline act for success.

What struck me is how often many of us have wanted to be the headline act but that is not our job. But we get caught up in the shove and grind of pushing to the top. So we trample over others. We elbow our way through. Some do make it to the top whether they are meant to be there or not but because they can push harder, shove better, are louder.

As Josh goes on to to say

God wants me to be fully, creatively myself, without shame or passivity. There is no higher calling, or expression of who I am, than to point towards Christ

But I also think an equally high calling to to encourage others to get to where they are meant to be – whether that is leading a church, leading a group, being a great musician, writer, etc. And it is to say “look at them. Haven’t they done great” instead of feeling that quiet stab of jealousy and wanting to say “you should have known them when ….”

Am I willing to come second? I know I can be ok about point towards Jesus but am I happy about seeing someone in a similar field to myself doing well. Or what is often a biggie – seeing someone’s children “making it” [whatever that really means] when your own are bumbling along just being!

When I first had this amazing encounter with God and realised that, even though I was a mess in the world’s eyes, God thought I was awesome and loved me as I was, I was given a bookmark with “Be Still and KNOW I am God” Ps 46:10. Then when I was with YWAM Scotland one of those on my team drew me a picture of me lying with a cuppa watching the sun rise or set. But still I kept busy, kept elbowing, kept wanting to be more than God intended.

That picture from Mrs Kim on my study wall

After a turbulent year that I made more stressful by getting a part time job to fill a gap God has shown me that I am at my fullest for them when I am calm, resting, there for others.

Yes much as I would love to be a leader, run a ministry, work hard, my calling, my ‘fully creative self’ is being able to have time for others, to drink coffee with them, to listen to them, to be a safe space for them, to encourage them, as well as my writing. So 30+ years from that encounter with God in all their gentle acceptance I think I am finally coming to accept and realise that verse of being still and just knowing God. It follows on then with “and I will be exalted in the nations.”

God is going to be more exalted if I stop putting to be first, stopping pushing for the noticeable ‘ministry position’, that ‘accepted place in a church setting’. So hopefully I am going to enter 2024 being more still, more able to point towards Jesus, more able to be fully, creatively who I am, and just letting God rise into my nation, into those they have placed around me without me having to go looking.

So are you willing to come second?

Categories
Feminist Roles

What Does This Really Say?

This is a joke that does the rounds regularly at Christmas and we all have a bit of a laugh about it. But this year after reading books like Laura Bate’s Everyday Sexism and some about the ignored achievements by women by Sandi Toksvig I didn’t find it funny.

Why would women not have trusted the ancient prophecies? Why would they want to clean up? Why would they want to cook? Why be practical? The gifts the wisemen brought were prophetic and practical.

I find this whole “joke” puts both men and women down and puts them in a box that many of us for years have been trying to get out of. I find it even sadder when something like this is shared with a group of women who are not being fully who they could be because they are keeping house, looking after children and grandchildren, doing the “ought to” things that women feel they need to do, whilst their husbands and/or children get on and do the having a career, a purpose, a role in society.

To me this, and other things like it, say that a women’s true job it to the one who keeps things going by making sure things are clean and tidy and everyone is fed. Then if there is time she can then do what she wants.

What I really hope in the story of the Wisemen visiting Jesus is that there were prophetic women in the group that said “yes this is what the stars say and so this is where the new King of Judah should be” and were then willing to say they had made a mistake. I hope when they got to the stable with Jesus in it that they were so blown away by seeing God Incarnate that they didn’t give a sh*t about whether the stable was clean or dirty, whether Mary had had time to clear up, whether there was a good meal. I really hope they just feel flat on their faces and worship the King of Kings. I really do hope that, like the men in the group, the were blown away by what they saw and just wanted to praise and worship God.

So my hope this Christmas is that women stop trying to keep the house together, stop trying to make sure everyone is alright and well fed, stop worrying about what other people might think of their house if they enter it, stop trying to look like “good girls” and will fall at the feet of Jesus.

Also getting on to the last part – it isn’t up to the women or the men or anyone to bring peace on earth. God will do that if we stop trying and just worship them with everything we have.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’

Mark 12:30

And stop worrying about what people will think, about whether the house is clean, about whether there is food, about anything. Then you, then I, will be at peace and so then Peace can truly reign on earth. But it has to start with individual people who can then join to become a whole.

Categories
Bible children

Samuel

No connection to what I’m going to explore but he just looks so cute. Photographed by me November 2023

I’ve been trying to get down to some Bible study as I have been a bit lax on it recently. So I’m following 24/7 Prayer’s Lectio365 app and trying to hear something different. Sometimes it is hard when you are reading the same pieces you’ve read for over 30 years [and when I first met with God I read my Bible loads and loads, reading it through twice in both my first and second years of meeting Jesus plus teaching on things, etc, etc and reading to my children] It takes a bit of concerted effort not to just go “yeah yeah I know what that says”

This was what was on the app for Friday –

 The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the house of the Lord, where the ark of God was. 4 Then the Lord called Samuel.

Samuel answered, “Here I am.” 5 And he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

But Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.” So he went and lay down.

6 Again the Lord called, “Samuel!” And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

“My son,” Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.”

7 Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord: The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.

1 Samuel 3:3-5

What jumped out at me was verse 7. We don’t know how many years Samuel has been serving in the temple. It is possible he was five when Hannah weaned him – yes people used to wean their children much later than most of us do in our fast paced modern world. And I suspect as she knew he was going to live in the temple she probably waited longer just so she knew he would be ok. He was a small child not a baby or a toddler. Like I say we don’t know how much later God decides to call Samuel personally but I suspect it wasn’t within his first year.

So there he has been serving in the temple with Eli doing his priestly stuff and yet Samuel “did not yet know the Lord. The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” Goodness me what had been going on? Why had Eli not got around to helping Samuel know the Lord and know “the word of the Lord”?

Yet, as always when one lets God speak, I wonder how often we as Christian parents and children’s workers and youth workers [of which I have been all three] read the stories to our children, do the fun children’s and youth activities, etc but don’t give those young people in our care time to really know who God is and let God’s word be revealed to them personally.

Yes we tell them about God, we get them to pray, but how often to we stop and ask God to speak with them? [Note not a condemnation piece but a questioning piece wondering why so many young people don’t follow God after having been immersed in church]

I think too often, like Eli, we think we know how God will speak because that’s how they have spoken with us so we tell those young people in our care “this is God“. Then when God turns up to them personally often we are not as wise as Eli and don’t say “oh my I think that’s God talking to you in your language.” Eli did miss that it was God first of all and dismissed Samuel. It was only the third time [and that is a story telling technique and it may have been more or less times] that it dawns on Eli to tell Samuel to listen to God.

I have had to some major forgiveness from times when I was first talking with God and wanting to share it with others and was told that could not possibly God because God didn’t speak like that. But I think I have also been guilty of speaking of some of the young people who’ve been in my care because God was speaking to them differently. Or have seen them mold what they have heard to fit in with what I would like or what the group would like.

Like I say this is not condemnation piece but something that first made me go “Oh Eli why did you not teach Samuel about God in all that time” to hearing God’s still small voice asking me if there have been times when I have been like that.

The Bible, I believe, is always personal to each one of us, but too often we don’t like to really listen to what God wants to say to me. I believe the Bible is living and is God’s way of talking to each of us, not in one of those big sermon type ways but with us sitting, reading, getting involved with it.

Though I do wonder if that is why we don’t like to do it. Better to have something that one can say “this is what this passage says” than “God has just used that to open my eyes to some place where I have missed God’s mark [sinned]“